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Sleep Deprevation & Simple Sassy Soda Bread

During the holidays Mr. Fish & I decided to let the Guppy stay up to ‘enjoy’ her extended family that she nearly never sees (despite their relatively close geographical proximity). You see, the Guppy is generally on a pretty fixed sleep schedule, because that’s just the kind of kid she is. Some kids, well, you can put them to bed whenever, they nap whenever, and that just works great. The Guppy, on the other hand, tells us when she wants to go to bed, which is generally around 8pm. This annoys some (usually parents whose kids never, ever want to go to bed and need to be lassoed and tied down to their beds) because it can be a bit of a hindrance to our social lives. So in an attempt to make good on our easy-going, flexible parenting we let Guppy stay up rather late (9 and 10 p.m.) one more than one occasion during the week of Solstice & Christmas, till after midnight a few nights back when her aunt & uncle were here for dinner, and she was up until after 3 a.m. dancing up a storm at her cousin’s New Year’s party. ‘How nice you stayed so late’ mused the family members. Uh huh. How nice indeed.

She seemed to have slipped back into her pre-fête schedule without too much difficulty, was in bed at 8 p.m. last night, and all seemed just fine. Until 1:30 a.m. when she decided that her sleeping was over for the evening and she was ready for a snack. I tucked her back in, and continued to do so until after 4:30 a.m. When my alarm went of at 5:30 a.m. for my run, I thought I was going to be sick. I’m still on vacation, so Mr. Fish just slept through the revolving door between our two bedrooms. Needless to say I didn’t go run, and had to gather all the strength I had to get out of bed at 8:30 in an attempt to get Guppy up to re-calibrate her schedule. There are times when I really, really don’t get why people have more than once child.

At all.

So, despite all my lofty plans of running & baking & cleaning & shopping for today, there is just a lot of staring off into space going on. I did, however, manage to try a recipe from La Dolce Vegan! : ‘Simple Sassy Soda Bread’. This wasn’t actually my first choice, I wanted to make the ‘Sassy Sandwich Bread’, but as I began the recipe I was devastated to find that my baking yeast was DOA, so I needed a non-yeast bread.

The pluses of this recipe are that it was really quick to throw together and didn’t require anything to fancy or complicated from the cupboard. It cooked up nice & fluffy, which is sometimes not the case with vegan ‘quick’ breads. My only real disappointment is from the bland taste of the bread. The toasted sesame seeds to add some dimension, but I think that next time I will add some rosemary or coriander or curry or something to give it a little zam.
So far my biggest complaint about this cookbook is that there is just way too much stuff, but no substance, no grit. The majority of the recipes are things you just sort of throw together yourself in your kitchen & you don’t really need a cookbook to tell you what to do. There is also a great deal of repetition which is tedious. I am sure, though, there there are some jem recipes in there, I just need a little more sleep & motivation to find them.